Helimed 2 landing at Raigmore Hospital

I never grow tired of seeing this.

Callsign: Helimed 2 (G-SASB)
A Eurocopter EC-135 (T2+) operated by Bond Air Services on behalf of the Scottish Ambulance Service lands at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.

Ambulancing

I rode along as an observer with crews from Aberdeen ambulance station a few nights ago. It was good fun and, although I didn’t get to see any really exciting jobs, I learnt quite a lot.

First job of the night was an urgent transfer from the helipad, a diver destined for the hyperbaric chamber brought in by Helimed. We were there in plenty of time so I was lucky enough to be in position to get a video of the helicopter coming in to land. Apologies for the quality, I need to get an iPhone 4 so I can shoot hi-def videos from the back of an ambulance when I don’t have my video camera with me.

As the rotors spun down and everyone decamped from the helo, I was struck by how small and cramped it looked. I’ve never had the chance to see one of these Eurocopter EC 135s up close before, but from a distance they definitely look bigger.

The patient was ambulatory and therefore able to walk to the ambulance, we didn’t have to faff about with the trolley. As everyone was piling into the back of the ambulance after them, one of the flight medics glanced down at my ID badge. Only the bottom strip, reading ‘NHS Grampian’, was showing, the bit reading ‘Medical Student’ was hidden. He turned and asked, “are you from the Hyperbaric Centre?”
“No,” I replied hastily, anxious to dispel any notion that I was important or had any responsibility for patient care, “I’m just a medical student.” Obviously some of the raw panic I was feeling must have shown in my eyes, because he chortled at that. We drove round the corner to the Hyperbaric Centre where we were quickly dismissed by the medical team. Not in a disrespectful way, our initial handover was obviously so detailed they simply didn’t have any questions. However, we were destined to return in short order.

As soon as we cleared from the hyperbaric unit we were tasked to an urgent transfer. A gentleman had taken a tumble at a nursing home and, although unhurt, he had become uncommunicative and apparently less aware of his surroundings since. We took him to the geriatric assessment unit at Woodend for triage and further treatment.

Then, in a move that surprised us all, we were tasked back to the hyperbaric centre, not for a transfer, but as an emergency. The details came though and sure enough it was the same patient we had dropped of earlier and they wanted us to… “transfer her to A&E for an x-ray”. What? Why did this warrant a blue light response? Alas, that is not for us mere mortals to decide, so we trundled back and sure enough they were waiting for us. Apparently the patient had previously had a thoracotomy so the doctor wanted a chest x-ray before putting them in the chamber. I have since discovered that what I had always thought of as a ‘thoracotomy’; a clamshell incision or ‘bilateral anterolateral thoracotomy’, is actually just one kind of thoracotomy. You could also describe more minor incisions like a median sternotomy as a thoracotomy, not that cutting your sternum in half with an oscillating saw is exactly minor, but it’s more minor that this:

Best avoid one of these if you can!

I am yet to be enlightened as to why a simple transfer required a blue light response in the first place. Anyway we got everyone safely to A&E, everyone being: the patient, the consultant, a nurse, a paramedic, an EMT and me, the medical student. 6 people and one ambulance to take one patient 500m, and back again (after the doctor jumped the queue), for an x-ray. Surely there are some potential efficiency savings to be made there.

I’ll be honest, the rest of my night was so unremarkable I won’t even bother telling you about it. The rest of what I saw was evidence of what people can do to themselves when they have too much to drink and:

• Ride bikes into cars on Union Street.
• Collapse at the side of the road where concerned members of the public with mobile phones can call us and run off.
• Collapse in the road and attract the attentions of a disproportionate number of coppers and ‘Street Pastors’.
• Collapse outside a restaurant and cause the owner to call us because they are concerned for the image of their establishment patient’s welfare.

We ended the night with a classic ‘nan down’ call. Little old lady fell out of bed in the night and her daughter couldn’t get her up on her own. All the friends, family and neighbours who normally help were unavailable (it was about 3am), so we didn’t mind scooping her up off the floor and depositing her back in bed. She was unhurt, so we left them to get a few more hours kip.

So there it is; a shift of transfers and drunks. Quite good fun really.

Shatner Of The Mount

Ok, I’m not dead, just on holiday. Another filler post here for you.

I found this YouTube video very funny, but you may not. I find it funny because, a) I’ve seen the film being, errr.. “discussed”; and b) it’s William freekin’ Shatner!!!!

So, mostly for the nerds out there (who have no doubt already seen this, because we spend, like, all day on YouTube, right? o_O) here is……

Shatner Of The Mount

***
p.s. The source material for this video is here. Absolute bull crap like.

Exam 1: Community Course

How much do you know?

This is actually true! After I had finished the exam, I had a bit of time left so I started playing around with my calculator. It still had some numbers programmed in to it from my advanced highers. Before you all go crying “cheat”, while it might not have been exactly permissible to have programmable calculators in the exams, all the information was stuff we were given in our data book anyway. This way just saved me having to type the same figures over and over again, and it reduced calculator syntax errors.

The things saved in my calculator memory were:
A: 6.02 x 10²³
B: not used
C: 300000000
D: not used
E: 1.6 x 10^-19
F: 6.63 x 10^-34
X: 6.67 x 10^-11
Y: not used
M: 9.11 x 10^-31

Flicking through them in a quiet exam hall, waiting for an exam to finish, it reminded me of my AH days. I used to know a little bit about a lot of things: Maths, Physics, Chemistry, and English and Biology from Higher. In short, I used to know what all those number meant. I knew how to use them and when to use them. Now, I don’t. I know A is Avogadro’s constant, C is the speed of light (in a vacuum), I’m reasonably confidant E and M are to do with electrons, and I think F is Plank’s constant. X looks familiar, but I’m damned if I know what it is. Or what to do with any of them.

And maths. I used to be okay at maths. I wasn’t hugely slick by the time advanced highers came along, but these days I would struggle with a simple integration. I know it’s really sad, but I miss it. I miss my chemistry and my physics… okay I can live without advanced maths, but I miss the rest. Don’t get me wrong, medicine is interesting and everything, and it will only get more interesting from here (on average that is, I do still have 3 years more community course to contend with). But at the same time it’s not stimulating in quite the same way my school subjects were. I never thought I’d miss them. By the end of school I was glad to be rid of them. Not in a “omg skl is, like, so not for me, I canna wait to get oot o’ this place” sort of way; more like “I’m ready to move on, I’m tired of the stupid rules and the younger years acting like twats and being treated like I child, I want to be doing something more”. And so here I am, doing more, and in a ‘grass is always greener’ sort of way I miss what I had. I’d never want to go back, not in a million years, but you know, I liked knowing just as much as everyone else did about everything, even if I wasn’t taking the same subjects as them.

Then I got tired reminiscing about old times and playing with my calculator, so I started writing a story on our scrap paper instead. Of course I had just got to the line “All the passion went out of their marriage years ago, so when her husband went away the women liked to…..” and Dr. Sinclair told everyone to stop writing. I was hoping to get extra marks from the marker for showing creativity you see. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a ‘silly word’ in to my paper either, I whimped out. I was considering a phrase from this video (skip to 2:55 for the quote, watch the whole thing for a laugh)

I don’t know how the others got on with “Dinosaur” and “Choppa!” yet. Let’s see that clip again:

Oh yeah, the exam. It was piss. Seriously, who makes up those questions?

Golden

How cruel is the golden rule,
When the lives we lived are only golden plated.

And I knew that the lights of the city were too heavy for me,
Though I carried karats for everyone to see.

And I saw God cry in the reflection of my enemies,
And all the lovers with no time for me,
And all the mothers raise their babies to stay away from me.

Tongues on the sockets of electric dreams,
When the sewage of youth drowned the spark of my teens.

And I knew that the lights of the city were too heavy for me,
Though I carried karats for everyone to see.

And I saw God cry in the reflection of my enemies,
And all the lovers with no time for me,
And all the mothers raise their babies to stay away from me,
And pray they don’y grow up to be.

I just found this, or rather iTunes found it for me in a party shuffle selection. I didn’t even realise when it was on, I just remember absent mindedly giving it a 3 star rating. Then I had it running round my head for the rest of the day, only the rhythm is quite unique and I couldn’t remember exactly how it went. It was very annoying. Anyway, I found it again and fell in love. I’ve been listening non-stop for the past few days.

She is

Do not get me wrong I cannot wait for you to come home
For now you’re not here and I’m not there, it’s like we’re on our own
To figure it out, consider how to find a place to stand
Instead of walking away and instead of nowhere to land

This is going to break me clean in two
This is going to bring me close to you

She is everything I need that I never knew I wanted
She is everything I want that I never knew I needed

It’s all up in the air and we stand still to see what comes down
I don’t know where it is, I don’t know when, but I want you around
When it falls in place with you and I, we go from if to when
Your side and mine are both behind it’s indication

This is going to bring me clarity
This’ll take the heart right out of me

She is everything I need that I never knew I wanted
She is everything I want that I never knew I needed

This is going to bring me to my knees
I just want to hold you close to me

She is everything I need that I never knew I wanted
She is everything I want that I never knew I needed

She is everything
(I needed)
She is everything

DNR

A terribly produced video that made me smile.